Thank you for visiting Hog Watch Manitoba’s site. Hog Watch Manitoba believes that we can have a hog industry in Manitoba that is environmentally, ethically and economically sustainable. In order to do so we need to stop the use of intensive confinement systems for the animals and use housing systems for pigs that includes group housing for breeding sows and straw-based housing for all pigs. We are calling for the phase-out, over the next decade, of all liquid manure systems. 

Currently, the hog industry in Manitoba allows certain practices like the use of gestation stalls, no covers on manure lagoons, no air scrubbers on barn ventilation, that are outlawed in several other countries around the world. Why should we have looser regulations here that add to environmental threats, inhumane housing for the animals, antibiotic resistance concerns and toxic odour problems for neighbours? As well, Manitoba lakes – including the 10th largest lake in the world, Lake Winnipeg – have had increasing blue-green algae blooms since the 1990’s, around the same time that the hog industry exploded in Manitoba. Phosphorus and nitrogen in hog manure runoff from fields may well be a significant contributor to this problem along with human sewage and climate change.